Welcome to this companion to Part II of the thesis ‘To Move Beyond the Nation: A Tripartite Framework for the Historical Study of Ideology’, written to fulfil the requirements of the MA History at Leiden University. This site has been constructed with two goals in mind: firstly, to ensure comfortable access to the primary sources cited in this thesis – notably the interviews conducted by dr. Willemse relating to the anarchist decade of Albalate de Cinca. Second, to accommodate source material which, despite being invaluable, has proven impossible to fit inside the narrow bounds of a master’s thesis.

To the readers of my thesis: all citations to the interviews conducted carry the exact same numbering system here as within the thesis. Please note, however, due to practical (and legal) reasons, this site does not represent all  primary source. This companion serves as a collection; not a comprehensive inventory.

To interested passersby: the central historiographical intervention of aforementioned thesis concerns and effort to emancipate history writing from the national frame. It proposes to do so by rehabilitating the notion ‘ideology’ as a serious instrument in historians’ toolkit. Crucially, however, in updated- and expanded form: after Žižek, Hegel and Marx, ideology is interpreted to constitute not only the common-sensical notion of ideology as a complex of ideas (i.e. a doctrine), but also its ritualistic moments as well as individual belief. Importantly moreover, not only this inheritance of Hegel and Marx in Žižek’s philosophy, but equally Siniša Malešević’ sociological research program of nationalism (‘ideology’, ‘social organisations’, ‘micro-level solidarity’) as well as the historiography of José Álvarez Junco, Eric Hobsbawm and Michael Billig are intuited to each drive fundamentally at this same triptych, which (thetically) embodies the entire ideological edifice.

Part II of this thesis – the part to which this site offers companionship – synthesises and applies these philosophical-, sociological and historiographical insights to anarchism. More precisely, it conducts experimental historiography using the anarchist decade of Albalate de Cinca (Huesca, Aragon, Spain). The Oral History collection created by dr. Willemse (and made freely available at the International Institute for Social History (IISH), Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is of prime importance here – these give this site its raison d’être.

Please do not hesitate to fill out this form to get the MA thesis ‘To Move Beyond the Nation’.

Kind regards,
Sjors Schaap
21/3/2026